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“In my category, I’m the one and only,” proclaimed Oakland legend Too $hort on his 1990 single “Short But Funky.” Few disagreed then, and even fewer would do so decades later. First appearing in the mid-1980s, slinging homemade tapes out of his car trunk, the man born Todd Shaw has always stayed true to himself. Although he is known more for the dirty side of his rap game, on “Short But Funky,” he also reminds listeners of an important fact: “There’s a serious side to everything I say.” Short Dog’s In The House, was $hort’s sixth studio album, and his second for the Jive label. By the time it hit, he was a West Coast legend, but his rep was growing Eastwards, as the rest of the country started opening its ears to new sounds. Peaking at #20 on the national Billboard 200 chart, the album was exactly what his dedicated fans expected funky, 70s drenched beats made for cars on the boulevard, and no nonsense lyrics that made more sense and dropped more knowledge than he was ever given credit for. For examples of his conscious side, look no further than the P-Funk fueled “It’s Your Life” or the album’s lead single, “The Ghetto.” The album’s second single “Short But Funky” landed somewhere in the middle of $hort and Todd Shaw, talking about where he was at as the new decade broke, and making it clear that he wasn’t going anywhere. His mortality was mainly on his mind after rumors had surfaced the year before that he had died in a crack house. He speaks directly to this crazy episode on “Dead Or Alive.” And although it’s mostly a solo affair, he brings in some heavy artillery and a lot of not for the kids profanity on “Ain’t Nothin’ But A Word To Me,” featuring none other than Ice Cube In between, $hort distributed plenty of tales and charisma for fans to eat up, continuing to build his legendary status as one of the rap trailblazers of the era. Get On Down has repressed this 1990 Bay Area classic album on Blue and Ruby Color-In-Color vinyl

For RSD 2025 the influential band will be releasing a new double LP edition of their Nine Sevens box set of 7" records first released in 2018. Combining the run of early singles with more obscure later period tracks underlines the strength in depth that Wire had. This is pop art as art/pop and an exploration of the blank canvas of pop culture and how far that canvas can be stretched going from three minute constructs to ambient washes. The 7" single was always the ultimate artefact and statement with the A side being the band momentarily paused in time and distilled and freeze-framed into the forever with less than three minutes of electric sound. These "sevens" released from 1977 to the end of that decade, signpost the band's remarkable development from their brilliantly monochromatic early phase to the textured complexity of the almost psychedelic unzipping of their sound and vision. In some ways the compilation of Nine Sevens onto a double album makes for quite a weird documentation of the band in this period. The first disc, to some extent, follows the script of a singles / greatest hits collection but the second one goes wildly off-piste and ends up somewhere quite far from where the collection started. A conventional Greatest Hits collection, besides being conceptually a bit naff would, if strictly based on charting singles, consist of only one song! A Best Of is subjective and somewhat pointless in the age of the Spotify playlist that anyone can make. The only thing really that these tracks have in common (besides being by Wire) is that they were released or destined to be released on 7" by Wire in the period 1977-1980. - Nine Sevens is both title & elevator pitch!' Wire always understood the language of pop and also the artfulness of playing with it, deconstructing it and reassembling it into new and thrilling shapes. Decades later, these adventures into sound are like slices of delicious, perfect pop/noise and hits from a parallel universe. Track list:Side A1 Mannequin 2 Feeling Called Love 3 12XU 4 I Am the Fly5 Ex-Lion Tamer 6 Dot Dash *7 Options R * Side B 8 Outdoor Miner (single version) * 9 Practice Makes Perfect 10 A Question Of Degree * 11 Former Airline *12 Map Ref. 41ºN 93ºW Side C 1 Go Ahead * 2 Our Swimmer * 3 Midnight Bahnhof Café * 4 Second Length (Our Swimmer) **5 Catapult 30 ** Side D (154 EP) 6 Song 1 * 7 Get Down 1 + 2 * 8 Let's Panic Later *9 Small Electric Piece * * previously unreleased on vinyl album ** recorded in 1980 but not released until 2014

Following the departure of Wire's drummer Robert Grey in 1990 WIR had risen phoenix like from the ashes of the acclaimed UK post-punk band after and were created to fulfil the final phase of Wire's Mute Records contract. With a more sequence based sound, WIR saw the band breaking all their own rules by creating a new sparse electronic music with Graham Lewis singing most of the vocals and even cannibalising their own catalogue by sometimes sampling their own older material. WIR was, however, not a long-term project and besides completing their only album, The First Letter, their only other activities were a very small number of gigs and two multi-artist "conceptual happenings" under the name I Saw You. One of these was in Clapham in April 1992 on election night and the other in Vienna in Feb 1993. On that Vienna trip, in addition to playing the gig, the band recorded a radio session for the Austrian national broadcaster ORF which was organised by Peter Rehberg - later the person behind MEGO & sadly no longer with us. This was released in 1996 by Touch on CD and consisted of two long tracks with a running time of almost 25 minutes. Once the short run of CDs had sold out, the rights technically fell to the band, and pinkflag released it - digital only - in 2007 and now released on vinyl for the first time. The remastered 2025 vinyl / CD / digital edition adds a newly recorded, Taylor Swift style re-recording of what is undoubtedly WIR's most pop moment, the dark brooding shadows of So and Slow. The version released here is based on how the band played it live, so, inspite of being instantly recognisable, it does not follow the arrangement of any previously released version.

LINKIN PARK—Mike Shinoda, Brad Delson, Phoenix, Joe Hahn, alongside new members Emily Armstrong of critically acclaimed band Dead Sara as co-vocalist and Colin Brittain songwriter/producer for G Flip, Illenium, One OK Rock as drummer—share their first brand new music in seven years.

The iconic band shared a new single “The Emptiness Machine,” which is also the herald for the arrival of LINKIN PARK’s first album since 2017, FROM ZERO, on November 15.

About the new era, Shinoda stated, “Before LINKIN PARK, our first band name was Xero. This album title refers to both this humble beginning and the journey we’re currently undertaking. Sonically and emotionally, it is about past, present, and future—embracing our signature sound, but new and full of life. It was made with a deep appreciation for our new and longtime bandmates, our friends, our family, and our fans. We are proud of what LINKIN PARK has become over the years, and excited about the journey ahead.”

Right out of the gate, “The Emptiness Machine” channels the DNA of LINKIN PARK, harnessing the band’s explosive energy and retaining the hallmarks of their instantly identifiable and inimitable sound. A chameleonic and catchy anthem, Shinoda’s hypnotic melodies hand off to Armstrong’s blistering chorus, over distorted riffs and head-nodding drums.

Ultimately, with FROM ZERO, the band is looking to harness the purest energy of their past, present, and future. The new era has officially begun.

15th Anniversary Edition. Lime Green Vinyl. When Dinosaur Jr. reunited, more than 20 years after their formation and legendary dissolution, the worry was that these guys were just flogging the back catalog, taking the old show on the road as a marketing gimmick. But the 2007 release of Beyond gave a hearty Marshall-driven "F**K YOU!" answer to those inquiring ears. Restoring the sound established by the unassailable hat-trick gambit of their first three albums -- Dinosaur, You're Living All Over Me, and Bug -- Beyond continued the band's march into rock greatness by making old ears smile and new ears bleed afresh. And then came Farm, the 9th full length record by the original line-up: J Mascis, Lou Barlow, and Murph. If Beyond was Dinosaur Jr.'s return to form, Farm is proof that Dinosaur Jr. could (and still do, to this day!) deliver timeless, exhilarating rock music. Farm encompasses Dinosaur Jr.'s signature palette: soaring and distorted guitar, unshakable hooks, honey-rich melodies. At times wholly 70's guitar-epic, at times perfect for sitting by a babbling brook with Joni and Neil, these songs get into your head and stay there, bouncing happily around. The ear-catching "Plans" is nearly seven minutes of classic whipped-topping rock dessert, while "I Don't Wanna Go There" is a meat-and-potatoes main dish, mixing unapologetic lead guitar with straight-ahead delivery a la James Gang or Humble Pie. This expanded deluxe edition of Farm features four songs never pressed to vinyl and never given worldwide release:"Houses", "Whenever You're Ready" (The Zombies Cover), "Creepies" (Instrumental), and "Show". "Whenever You're Ready", a cover of classic pop-rockers The Zombies, is impossibly good for a hidden gem; Murph stomps in with a sledgehammer to the kit, J and Lou layer low-end and fuzz like two halves of one brain, and right when things feel biggest, airy and colossal, there's J with a lightning bolt of a guitar solo. Pure electricity and melody like only he can make. Recorded in J Mascis' Bisquiteen studio in Amherst, Massachusetts, Farm was produced by Mascis himself, and delivers the singular, unique energy of one of America's greatest living rock bands.

The anniversary edition comes in a gatefold-sleeve on clear / golden marbled vinyl with an exclusive poster. It all started in Gothenburg, Sweden back in 2003. After various incarnations the band we've now come to know as EF hit their stride by opening up their heavy distorted guitar palet to a much richer, textural approach with haunting melodies and harmonies. The band started touring and built up a dedicated fanbase throughout the years. The experience and confidence gained from these 22 odd tours have taken them all over Europe and Asia. It has shaped them to become the explosive, energetic and cathartic live band they are now today. As it goes with age and experience also comes growth. Although the sound of the band has evolved away from the hardcore infused post-rock of their early days, EF have always kept their hardcore d.i.y. ethics alive. By running their own record label, And the Sound Records, and setting up their own worldwide distribution they sold thousands of records along the way. In 2010 EF started to collaborate with German label Kapitän Platte by releasing the third album "Mourning golden morning" on vinyl. Now 15 years later, especially as the record is long time out of print, it's time to celebrate this anniversary with a new edition of this album that reached in the meantime the status of a post-rock masterpiece, to name in a row with bands like Caspian, Mogwai or Explosions in the sky.

The long-rumored, sweat-soaked live album from the night Bill Davis (Dash Rip Rock) and Fred Le Blanc (Cowboy Mouth) dared Jello Biafra to join them during Jazzfest and sing all classic New Orleans soul, rhythm and blues, and (at Jello's request) garage songs! Joining in were piano Wildman Pete Wet Dawg' Gordon (Mojo Nixon), Pepper Keenan (Down, Corrosion of Conformity) and a wacky horn section from Egg Yolk Jubilee and Morning 40 Federation that even includes a sousaphone! You want loose We got loose! You want crazy That's here, too. Walk on Jindal's Splinters is one of the all-time great you are there' high-energy live albums—audience participation galore, plenty of trademark Jello banter, and full-on soul / trash / frat / garage gumbo from eleven of New Orleans' finest, just playing their asses off and having a good time doing it. The album also showcases a whole 'nother side of Jello Biafra: his deep, pre-punk roots known only to a handful of vinyl junkies and anyone lucky enough to catch his DJ gigs. For all those whose interest in Jello goes beyond the punk persona to Jello Biafra, the singer, this is for you. Maximum trash appeal! Southern roadhouse debauchery at its finest! Calls to mind those sing-along, clap-along frat-rock platters from The Premiers to The Kingsman to Geno Washington's Hipsters, Flipsters... series, Swingin' Medallions, or even Slade Alive! You can almost feel the grease and voodoo dripping from the walls!" Showcases a rarely seen side of Jello—his pre-punk roots. Personnel includes members of Dash Rip Rock, Cowboy Mouth, Mojo Nixon, Corrosion of Conformity, etc. Vinyl includes digital download card

Pelican has always been a band that's not just from Chicago, but distinctly of Chicago. Formed in 2000 by guitarists Trevor Shelley de Brauw and Laurent Schroeder-Lebec alongside brothers Bryan and Larry Herweg on bass and drums respectively, Pelican's foundation was built upon the rule-free, genre-agnostic scene synonymous with the Fireside Bowl. "The `90s in Chicago was a free-for-all. Everyone was just coming from a place of pure creativity," says Shelley de Brauw. With Schroeder-Lebec returning to the band following Dallas Thomas' exit in 2022, this reunified version of Pelican allowed the band to tap back into those influences and build something distinctly new with Flickering Resonance. While longtime Pelican fans will find an updated version of the band's ethos_one that's been constantly evolving since their very first EP_their new partnership with Run For Cover Records emphasizes something that's always been implicit to the Pelican formula. These songs take as much inspiration from titanic `90s post-hardcore, space-rock, and emo as they do traditional metal, showing that though Godflesh and Goatsnake records occupied the shelves of Pelican's songwriters, so too did Quicksand, Christie Front Drive, and Hum. "A lot of people didn't hear it," says Schroeder-Lebec. "I was like, well, I guess the metal world is where we fit. But now, I'm willing to acknowledge all the suits we're wearing." On Flickering Resonance, Pelican allowed themselves to look at their music less as a means of hard-earned catharsis and more as an appreciation for the glimmers of joy that occur even in the bleakest landscapes.

The long-rumored, sweat-soaked live album from the night Bill Davis (Dash Rip Rock) and Fred Le Blanc (Cowboy Mouth) dared Jello Biafra to join them during Jazzfest and sing all classic New Orleans soul, rhythm and blues, and (at Jello's request) garage songs! Joining in were piano Wildman Pete Wet Dawg' Gordon (Mojo Nixon), Pepper Keenan (Down, Corrosion of Conformity) and a wacky horn section from Egg Yolk Jubilee and Morning 40 Federation that even includes a sousaphone! You want loose We got loose! You want crazy That's here, too. Walk on Jindal's Splinters is one of the all-time great you are there' high-energy live albums—audience participation galore, plenty of trademark Jello banter, and full-on soul / trash / frat / garage gumbo from eleven of New Orleans' finest, just playing their asses off and having a good time doing it. The album also showcases a whole 'nother side of Jello Biafra: his deep, pre-punk roots known only to a handful of vinyl junkies and anyone lucky enough to catch his DJ gigs. For all those whose interest in Jello goes beyond the punk persona to Jello Biafra, the singer, this is for you. Maximum trash appeal! Southern roadhouse debauchery at its finest! Calls to mind those sing-along, clap-along frat-rock platters from The Premiers to The Kingsman to Geno Washington's Hipsters, Flipsters... series, Swingin' Medallions, or even Slade Alive! You can almost feel the grease and voodoo dripping from the walls!" Showcases a rarely seen side of Jello—his pre-punk roots. Personnel includes members of Dash Rip Rock, Cowboy Mouth, Mojo Nixon, Corrosion of Conformity, etc. Vinyl includes digital download card

His story is entangled in the story of America, and he's been tracing it's highways and
entertaining it's audiences, and those abroad, for nearly six decades.
So, it's fitting that his new record, is entitled Look Out Highway, and it's remarkable
that a man who has spent more days on the road than off still brings such spirit and
passion to the music and the lifestyle. Throughout his illustrious career Charlie
Musselwhite has received 13 Grammy nominations and 33 Blues Music Awards. In
2014 his collaboration with Ben Harper Get Up won a Grammy and in 2010 he was
inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame. In 2023, Musselwhite was cast in Martin
Scorsese's film Killers of the Flower Moon.Charlie has collaborated with an eclectic
list of incredible artists over the years, including Ben Harper, Cyndi Lauper, Eddie
Vedder, Tom Waits, Bonnie Raitt, Gov't Mule, INXS, George Thorogood, Eliades Ochoa,
Cat Stevens, Elvin Bishop and John Lee Hooker.More than any other harmonica player
of his generation, Charlie Musselwhite can rightfully lay claim to inheriting the mantle
of many of the great harp players that came before him with music as dark as
Mississippi mud and as uplifting as the blue skies of California.
In an era when the term legendary gets applied to auto-tuned pop stars, this singular
blues harp player, singer, songwriter, and guitarist has earned and deserves to be
honored as a true master of American classic vernacular music.

"Songs To Fan The Flames Of Discontent" was first released in 1996 and catapulted the band Refused from Umea in northern Sweden into the hardcore punk premier league. The Scandinavians, who were known for their hard, uncompromising sound, provocative performances and irreverent lyrics, followed the album with extensive tours all over the world, for example with Kristofer Aström"s Fireside, Madball and Entombed.

"Songs To Fan The Flames Of Discontent" was first released in 1996 and catapulted the band Refused from Umea in northern Sweden into the hardcore punk premier league. The Scandinavians, who were known for their hard, uncompromising sound, provocative performances and irreverent lyrics, followed the album with extensive tours all over the world, for example with Kristofer Aström"s Fireside, Madball and Entombed.

Grails - the experimental rock institution who have cultivated a quarter-century career out of crate-plunging cultural curiosities - returns a mere two years after the lauded Anches En Maat with their most personal and emotionally resonant album to date. While the band still revel in rearranging bizarre and obscure sources into something often revelatory and surreal, Miracle Music does so with an ascendant melodic power that feels hallowed. The Miracle Music lineup includes cofounders Emil Amos (Om, Holy Sons, Lilacs & Champagne) and Alex Hall (Lilacs & Champagne), alongside returning members, AE Paterra (Zombi, Majeure), Jesse Bates, and Ilyas Ahmed. Produced by Amos, Miracle Music reunites the group with recording engineer Jason Powers and his Type Foundry studio in Portland, Oregon, where the earliest Grails records were made more than two decades ago. Replete with acoustic and electric guitars, synths, woodwinds, brass, samples, percussion - and featuring horn arrangements by Kelly Pratt (David Byrne, M. Ward) - Miracle Music unveils an exquisite new horizon for Grails. Creatively tireless as ever, Grails balance the boundary-pushing claustrophobia of early Industrial music with the airy melodies of Classical compositions to craft the heavy mood that is Miracle Music. In a catalog defined by mercurial departures, this is Grails' most sentimental and high-minded trip yet.

Grails - the experimental rock institution who have cultivated a quarter-century career out of crate-plunging cultural curiosities - returns a mere two years after the lauded Anches En Maat with their most personal and emotionally resonant album to date. While the band still revel in rearranging bizarre and obscure sources into something often revelatory and surreal, Miracle Music does so with an ascendant melodic power that feels hallowed. The Miracle Music lineup includes cofounders Emil Amos (Om, Holy Sons, Lilacs & Champagne) and Alex Hall (Lilacs & Champagne), alongside returning members, AE Paterra (Zombi, Majeure), Jesse Bates, and Ilyas Ahmed. Produced by Amos, Miracle Music reunites the group with recording engineer Jason Powers and his Type Foundry studio in Portland, Oregon, where the earliest Grails records were made more than two decades ago. Replete with acoustic and electric guitars, synths, woodwinds, brass, samples, percussion - and featuring horn arrangements by Kelly Pratt (David Byrne, M. Ward) - Miracle Music unveils an exquisite new horizon for Grails. Creatively tireless as ever, Grails balance the boundary-pushing claustrophobia of early Industrial music with the airy melodies of Classical compositions to craft the heavy mood that is Miracle Music. In a catalog defined by mercurial departures, this is Grails' most sentimental and high-minded trip yet.

Australia's left-field club renaissance keeps flowering, and Horatio Luna's cult 2020 debut Yes Doctor remains an essential root document. The LP welds dub-soaked bass pressure, broken-beat jack and smoky nu-jazz improv onto a house chassis—picture Moodymann deep cuts drifting through Dadawah's spiritual haze. Championed by Gilles Peterson after Luna appeared on Brownswood's Sunny Side Up compilation—where drummer Phil Stroud and synth maestro Dufresne also featured—the record was pieced together across 2019 during a run of late-night sessions while Hicks was living in the La Sape house. La Sape's brand-new 2025 pressing (cat. SAPE00825) uses freshly cut plates and presents the full ten-track programme on 140 g black vinyl. The package features subtle touch-ups to the jacket artwork and refreshed centre-label stickers while preserving the original aesthetic. "Yes Doctor is my coming-of-age—mixing every style I could think of into house, pushing aesthetic boundaries, making 'un-boxable' music," Luna says. File next to Theo Parrish and Yesterday's New Quintet: DJs will lock onto the title track's seven-minute bruk workout, while deeplistening customers will cherish the front-to-back journey in groove alchemy.

Tàrrega 91’s straightforward take on Discharge-inspired hardcore punk is a glass of fresh water in a polluted sea of bands trying to break through the algorithm and grab a few seconds of our ever-decreasing supply of attention. There are no gimmicks on Ckaos Total, just simple three and four-chord riffs, a driving drumbeat (you can guess which one), and thoughtful lyrics delivered with power and passion. Tempos vary from fast, to really fast, to ultra fast, with most songs in the latter category. Without studio effects, silly costumes, or metal chops to distract, the focus falls on the songs themselves, which distill a profound sense of hopelessness and frustration into a few defiant words to yell into the void. In their lyrics and artwork, Tàrrega 91' continues to draw inspiration from the 1991 uprising in their town that ended with the arrest of 86 young people, a history that makes them keenly aware of exactly what they’re pushing against. While so many contemporary bands emulate the aesthetics of punk’s classic era, on Ckaos Total Tàrrega 91 taps into the power of bands like Discharge, Wretched, and MG-15 by creating simple, sincere—and sincerely pissed—protest music.

“In May 2024, the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, where I was born and have lived all my life, faced the worst climate catastrophe in its history. After weeks of relentless, torrential rain, its rivers overflowed, flooding much of the region. Entire cities were submerged. More than 170 people lost their lives, and hundreds of thousands of animals perished. Amid this dystopian and desperate situation, flux was composed and recorded in about a week. Initially, the album was created solely as an exercise to maintain my mental health. But when I finished it, I realized that it had become a kind of “sound portrait” of this dark moment—days filled with pain and suffering. Yet it was also a meditation on the ephemerality and fragility of life, and the struggle to survive.”

Even now, as he reaches his eighth decade, with a lifetime of accolades and a
seminal body of music behind him, Robin Trower is still chasing the biggest
high he knows
It always starts the same way, with a road-scuffed Fender Stratocaster and a revvedup Marshall amplifier, those skilful fingers exploring the fretboard until a riff sticks and
a new song ignites. And from the cultural flashpoint of Sixties London with Procol
Harum, through 1974's stadium- filling Bridge Of Sighs, right up to this year's
acclaimed Come And Find Me, it's these addictive moments of creation that have kept
the guitarist vital, relevant and contemporary while his peers trade on past glories.
"Some people say I'm driven, but I think it's just the love of doing it," reflects Trower of
a multi- million- selling solo catalogue fast approaching thirty releases (and that's
before you compute his collaborations with everyone from Jack Bruce to Bryan Ferry).
"I play guitar every day and just through messing around, ideas happen. I can never
feel the songs coming. But all of a sudden, you get a sliver of an idea and you think,
'Oh, what's this...?'"

Necro State dives deep into emotional liminality — a space where anxiety, disconnection and introspection merge into a dark, immersive soundscape.

Across six tracks, NOAMM crafts a narrative that moves between restrained tension and cathartic release, drawing the listener into an inner journey that lingers long after the signal fades.

Mastering: Boris Divider

It's 2022. The world lockdown is finally over. Imagine a picturesque lake in Tuscany. Now imagine a floating state of the art studio on that lake with two maverick rock icons creating a wild, alchemical concept album: Hugo Race, frontman of Australian post-punk legends The Wreckery and guitarist for the Bad Seeds and leader of True Spirit and Fatalists, and Gianni 'Marok' Maroccolo, producer of Italian alternative music and film soundtracks since the 1980s Florence darkwave scene with Litfiba, CSI & CCCP. Together, they fuse an existential narrative made up of individual stories in the style of Boccaccio's Decameron with psychedelic soundscapes framed by experimental electronica, rock instrumentation and decades of experience as cutting edge musicians and studio producers to bring you an album that defies categorization - The Vigil… "We all knew the situation was inauspicious, the planets lined up overhead like a firing squad and this empty silence roaming around our town, cut off from the other mountain towns by an electrical blackout. Without power, there was no way of knowing what was happening anywhere else. Left alone with our thoughts until help came from outside, a group of us gathered around a blazing fire in the abandoned city hall, feeding it with documents and broken furniture. Scientific progress had long told us we were parcels of dumb atoms and that consciousness and the soul were merely human projections. Now science had failed itself..."

The first release of 2025 on Big Saldo’s Chunkers comes in hot with an all-killer, no-filler four-tracker from London’s Papa Nugs. All four tunes on Move it or Lose it are playful, upbeat house jams, with carefully arranged elements firmly aimed at the dancefloor. The seventh release on the label is a fully realized vision of Papa Nugs’ take on the classic chunkers style: big, boshy, hip-catching basslines, infectious vocal chops, party-starting percussion, and a generous helping of rave-ready samples and FX. Nugs’ masterful production chops shine through especially bright here. The canon of 90s club music is referenced with expert poise: subtle nods to early trance, progressive and hard house, turn-of-the-century Ibiza tribal, and insouciantly sleazy tech house are delicately woven into the tracks, along with the contemporary hip house vibe the label has gained notoriety for. As the lead vocal in Turn it Down repeats: “We’re here to have a good time, ” and the EP is exactly that. With festival season just around the corner, this one is sure to be a staple on main stages worldwide. Needless to say, now is not the time to sleep on the latest offering from BSC.

2025 Repress

The Knowledge Imprint Selected Reissues series brings together handpicked tracks from the labels back catalogue to be pressed for the first time on high quality vinyl. Previously available only as digital and small-batch dubplate editions, these tracks will also be given new life with fresh remastering and simple repackaging.

This inaugural release features some of the most seminal and highly requested tracks on the label in the form of Rene Wises K-I008 productions originally released in 2019, as well as Arthur Roberts K-I012 productions originally released in 2022.

Burnski's Constant Sound is very nearly at 50 releases and not one of them has ever dipped below essential levels of quality. Kepler has been a regular contributor to this fine catalogue and returns with more of his shuffling, playful and charming garage cuts. 'Recall' manages to be both deep and driving, with cute chord stabs and a smart vocal sample that adds the r&b gloss. 'Flavour' has those old school stabs and filthy basslines and 'Loft Groove' is a bouncy, low-slung number with organic percussion. Closing out another high-grade offering is 'Don't Stop' which brings some dubby chords to a slick, punchy house rhythm. Pure class.

Hyldon, Brazil’s highly revered vocalist, musician and producer, has partnered with Adrian Younge to create a new psychedelic soul album, HYLDON JID023. The duo, highly inspired by Hyldon’s seminal work in the ‘60s and ‘70s, revisits’ the spirit of this epoch while creating a modern-day classic. Hyldon’s unique voice and lyrical depth, combined with Younge’s innovative analogue production, ensures this album will not be forgotten. JID023 is one of the last recordings featuring Hyldon’s long-time collaborator and friend, the late drummer Ivan “Mamao” Conti of Azymuth.

Hyldon, a musical pioneer and early contributor to the “Black Rio” movement is a genius in synthesizing the sounds of MPB, Tropicália and Black American R&B. His unique voice, coupled with his rich arrangements and laid-back grooves set him apart from the contemporaries of the time. In ’75, his remarkable debut album, Na Rua, Na Chuva, Na Fazenda changed the sound of Brazil forever. Hyldon’s earnest and experimental approach in creating that album served as the inspiration for Younge’s production on the new JID023.

Months before Mamão's untimely passing, Adrian Younge and Hyldon invited the legendary drummer to join them at Younge’s Linear Labs studio in Los Angeles. Mamão and Hyldon shared a rich musical history — Azymuth, Mamão’s group, served as the rhythm section for much of Hyldon’s work, including his iconic 1975 LP, Na Rua, Na Chuva, Na Fazenda. Their goal was ambitious: to craft an album that would stand alongside Hyldon’s finest achievements, one that would captivate fans who love his unique blend of psychedelic and soulful “Música Brasileira.” The result is nothing short of remarkable.

“Producing a Hyldon album was a dream come true. I’ve studied his catalogue for so many years and highly respect the way he mixed the sound of The Beatles, with that of Marvin Gaye and Tim Maia. I’m still enamored by the fact that he is even a better singer now than he was, in what many deem, his prime. Also, we greatly miss our dear friend and contributor Mamão, the late drummer of Azymuth. We dedicated this album to his memory, and we wish he could have had the chance to hear the finished album.” – Adrian Younge

Songs such as “Olhos Castanhos” evoke the ethereal nature of The Beatles “Strawberry Fields” as the mellotron flutes and Hyldon’s vulnerable performance captivates our hearts. Mamão’s gritty and funky drumming on “Nhanderuvucu (The Creator of God)” showcase what made him a leading pioneer in Brazil’s samba funk scene. Apart from the remarkable drumming, multi-instrumentalist Younge accomplishes the unthinkable by playing every other instrument on JID023. The experimental fusion of horns, analog synthesizers and acoustic instrumentation on songs like “Viajante de Planeta Azul” take listeners on a funky journey to the blue planet; a fictional space that Hyldon lyrically describes with passion and conviction.

Hyldon JID023 is an unexpected, yet remarkable addition to the canon of Brazilian Music. Hyldon’s emotional resonance, coupled with Younge’s sophisticated production and Mamao’s outstanding drumming make this a standout album within the deep catalogue of Jazz Is Dead.

Soul Jazz Records’ new Secret Superstar Sounds brings together a wealth of incredibly catchy tunes from late-70s/early-80s British groups that you have probably never heard of! Powerpop mixed together a love of lyrical and melodically beautiful 60s pop and garage sounds, together with the energy and attitude of 70s punk. Almost completely out of kilter with the fashions of the day (punk, new wave and post-punk) these bands managed to fall between the musical cracks at almost every step of the way – leaving them practically unknown to all but a few.

Inspired by the D-I-Y messaging of bands like The Desperate Bicycles, Sniffing Glue fanzine and early UK punk labels like Stiff, Chiswick and Rough Trade, these bands chose mainly to go into a studio and make their own private press/D-I-Y records themselves – then try to work out everything else (promotion, marketing, etc) afterwards. As mainly outsiders to the mainstream music industry, and usually unable to make any inroads into it, save for sending their own record to John Peel, most of these bands fell at the first hurdle.

These records remain both beautifully crafted 3-minute musical gems, and long-lost micro-histories of an essentially hidden genre.
Featured bands here include The Squares, The Meanies, The Monitors, Plummet Airline, Tours, Gobblinz, Krypton Tunes and more. Most of these records were self-published D-I-Y releases made in very limited-editions and were often the only tracks ever released by these groups.

To celebrate 20 years since the release of Kylie Minogue’s sensational album Fever, a special 20th anniversary edition of the album will be released on white vinyl including a print.
Following the immense success of Light Years, Kylie returned the following year with an album that would go on to be one of the most important and influential records of the 21st century. In collaboration with writers and producers such as Cathy Dennis, Richard Stannard, Julian Gallagher, Ash Howes, Rob Davis and many more, it led to colossal global chart success, winning Kylie both International Album and International Female Solo Artist at the 2002 Brit Awards.
Featuring Kylie’s iconic hit ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’ which amassed a staggering 40 number ones across the globe, as well as ‘It’s In Your Eyes’ and ‘Love at First Sight.’

Bladee is a founding member of the music group and cultural phenomenon Drain Gang. Following Bladee’s first-ever run of physical titles at retail last year, which was a huge success (over 8000 units sold, #24 in the 40 Vinyl Albums Chart), YEAR0001 are now presenting the following collection of essential records from his catalogue. “rip bladee” is Bladee’s first compilation EP and a cult-classic amongst fans. Collecting a string of self-released singles, the EP includes features from Yung Lean and Bladee’s Drain Gang compatriot Thaiboy Digital. This is the first time ever this release is being pressed on vinyl.

Ltd edition sky blue vinyl, inc download.

Up In Her Room are delighted to bring you the latest offering from US psych heads White Shape, in conjunction with US label Little Cloud Records!

Hailing from Rockford Illinois, White Shape are a reverb-soaked experimental heavy psychedelic rock band that are able to create sublime ethereal soundscapes. Previous releases include the widely renowned 2019’s ‘Perfect Dark’ where the band deliver a heady and physical ride of tidal proportions. Whether you want cerebral psychedelic, body moving rhythm, or hard-hitting riffs White Shape caters to your every need. The record is an anthem to their collective vision, spreading out to showcase the various talents and specialties of each band member.

With the departure of two of the founding members through covid, Josh Weidman and Alyssa Hall set the sails once again to the wind and from the tumult of those incomparable times, they brought into existence their latest album, “Through the Lupine”. It is decidedly White Shape, with its brooding atmospheres, Hall’s iconic vocals that float and expand until they fill every physical space, and the classic narrative architecture that invites you to enter the music and with it create your own inner worlds. You can hear these in every track, and particularly in “Draped Urns.” 

But as it has been said, no one came through those times unscathed, untouched. Within the quintessential White Shape sound there is something else, something new. It can be heard in the previously releases 1st single from the album “Knives Down”; a shift in the barometric pressure, a sea change both profound and subtle. It’s a defiance, a refusal to go quietly into that good night, but with undercurrents of something else, something not yet found in the band’s prior work. Is it optimism? Hope? Or simply the resignation to create for the sake of creating. 

The true value of Through the Lupine is that it provides the listener with the space to craft their own interpretation. For the White Shape fan, there is everything you love and want. There’s just more, and it’s different, evolved. For the initiate, there is the beginning. The introduction to the next understanding of what it means to experience music. Long live White Shape!

Kindred spirits Passepartout Duo and Inoyama Land embody the essence of play - charting a new chapter and reinvigorating the environmental music and electronic landscape.

Passepartout Duo is formed of Nicoletta Favari (IT) and Christopher Salvito (IT/US), who since 2015 have been on a continuous journey travelling the world's corners, engaged in a creative process they term "slow music". Having been guests of many notable artist residencies and with live performances in cultural spaces and institutions, their evocative music escapes categorisation. With no fixed abode their musical pilgrimage brought them to Japan first in 2019, which prompted a deep connection to Kanky? Ongaku 'environmental music', a genre in which Inoyama Land is often associated with, soundtracking the duo's first immersive experience. In 2023 the duo revisited Japan and set out to reconnect in particular with the music of Inoyama Land, performed by Makoto Inoue and Yasushi Yamashita. The highly revered album 'Danzindan-Pojidon' (1983) produced by Haruomi Hosono amongst other well publicized and acclaimed reissues (Light in The Attic Records' Grammy-nominated compilation 'Kanky? Ongaku'), produced a global resurgence and admiration of the environmental music movement. Nicoletta took the lead to seek out Inoyama Land and in making contact successfully their intrigue and eagerness to meet was warmly reciprocated, and the group scheduled to meet in the form of a spontaneous improvisation session. "We're deeply concerned with what it means to be a duo, and what it means for people to connect through music."

Radio Yugawara is a unique one-off transmission from a specific place and point in time, unlikely to ever occur again. The respective duo's approach can really be described as "tuning in", a tuning into each other, to themselves, and to the surrounding nature of Yugawara. Like waves that travel off-world, sounds travel through the universe and can be lost forever if we don't seek them out. In finding a harmonic affinity within their instruments and a spiritual kinship in their interwoven performance, Radio Yugawara at its core is an interpretation of feeling, of close human interaction and the true essence of discovery.

"The album is both a transmission from a location, but also a tuning into the surroundings and to each other. Music in this kind of ephemeral moment is much less about active creation and more about discovering something which is already there in the air."

Canadian bowed guitarist and multi-instrumentalist C. Diab announces his fifth album Imerro, out February 16th, and presents the trip-infused lead single 'Lunar Barge'.

(Real name) Caton Diab creates soundscapes that evoke the spectacular wilderness of his childhood home in northern Vancouver Island. Incorporating experimental textures, folk overtones and tape manipulations, C. Diab uniquely finds the unseen spaces in-between, and fittingly dubs his creations "post-classical grunge". Imerro explores new sonic realms and is the culmination of a sound world that Diab has built up since the critically acclaimed 'No Perfect Wave' (2016, Injazero) and subsequent releases 'Exit Rumination' (2018), 'White Whale' (2020) and 'In Love & Fracture' (2021). The Wire calls it "ambient music in the best sense - music for living, which can be both non-invasive and immersive...epic"

Imerro was recorded in late July and August of 2021 at Risque Disque Studio in Cedar, BC, during the summer's unprecedented second "heat dome", which saw temperatures soaring to over 40 degrees. Recorded with regular collaborator and engineer Jonathan Paul Stewart, the pair journeyed by boat to the studio to a place with minimal distraction with a plan of "simple ecstatic improvisation." Diab explains: "I wanted to place myself in a space for creation with little thematic pretence, with the belief that music 'shows its face' as you move along. I would pick up an instrument, whether I had experience playing it or not, and make a sound. If it wanted to be played, it would play."

As the nights get colder and longer, we often lose touch with those around us. Nights when loneliness takes hold of us as our only dependable friend, and our imagination becomes the universe; forever questioning the existence of our own reality, while perpetually stuck in an emotional limbo.. Delve into your thoughts with ‘Lonely Days’, the latest Lofi Girl compilation featuring 31 artists worldwide. Soft beats, melancholic pianos, lulling guitars and a range of other instruments are knitted together like a warm blanket to bring ease and comfort for as long as you need. Focus on the ingressing dawn light, close your eyes, and breathe in - this feeling is only temporary, and better days are on their way.

Originally released on Ben Chasny's own Pavilion imprint in 2011.

"I was invited by the Incubate Festival and the city of Tilburg to participate in an artist residency where I would explore the region’s unique chapels built for the Virgin Mary. After writing the music for about six months by drawing on memories of the encounters with the chapels and using techniques inspired by Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics Of Reverie, I flew back to Tilburg to perform the music at the Incubate Festival. We recorded the evening and I released the result on my Pavilion label. Each cover was hand painted white on white in the old Pavilion style. I created a stencil and used graphite powder to make the design that is inspired by the sun imagery in Athanasius Kircher diagrams."

Roadside chapels express the identity of the inhabitants of North Brabant, a Dutch province, bordering on Belgium. Roman Catholicism has been the dominant religion in this southern part of the Netherlands since the eighth century. For about a century and a half this religion was strongly suppressed. Only when the French revolutionaries preached freedom of belief around 1800 could the people of North Brabant exercise their faith again. This was the start of a very strong emancipatory development from which a special form of the Roman Catholic faith arose that fully determined everyday life of the people here. This faith was the determining factor in life and the measure of all things. After the second Vatican Council (1962-1965) the reins of the catholic faith in Brabant were loosened as well. This was the start of a revolutionary process of secularisation. Within a decade hardly anything was left of the almighty influence of the Roman Catholic Church and this situation has lasted up to the present day.

In spite of the almightiness of the official, Vatican ruled, Roman Catholic faith, North Brabant has always and perhaps notoriously fostered an undercurrent of popular belief as well. This is a kind of belief in which elements of the official faith and age-old pre-Christian traditions are combined. Worshipping relics, holding pilgrimages and processions, the use of water from holy wells, popular art, recitations and songs, festivals, rituals, folk traditions, superstition and the like are all examples of popular devotion. These matters have strongly influenced and formed the identity of the present-day population of North Brabant. It is part of their immaterial heritage.

An obvious and still very much visible form of popular devotion are the roadside chapels. In Brabant some 400 can be found, most of which have been devoted to Mary. Chapels are small buildings in which Mary or other saints are worshipped. They can be found within villages or towns or in natural surroundings. Always at the finest spots! The beauty of the environment adds a primary religious or mystical feeling to the visitor. Local people attach great value to their chapels. In spite of the overall secularisation in society they are still at the centre of cultural and social life. Where people in North Brabant can hardly be found in the churches nowadays, this doesn’t mean at all they are no longer religious. On the contrary, religious feelings are perhaps stronger than ever, but now people have to find their own expression of them. That’s why they fall back on the age-old popular belief in which chapels play an important role. We can even witness new forms of popular belief with chapels as their focal point. An example of this is the scattering of ashes of people who have been cremated. Chapels clearly also play a role in the lives of young people. On an average five new chapels are added every year.

I have studied the popular culture and belief and the identity of the inhabitants of North Brabant for over thirty years. I have published over forty books on these subjects. In 2010 I was approached by the organisation of the Incubate Festival in the North Brabant town of Tilburg. Their request was for me to lead the American composer and guitarist Ben Chasny around a number of chapels in the province devoted to Mary. He had been invited to North Brabant to write some new compositions. Ben Chasny then chose to be inspired by these chapels and that’s how we met. I was especially curious how an American would react to something as specific and small as a roadside chapel in North Brabant, since we tend to think here of (people in) America in terms of ‘big-bigger-biggest’. Would an inhabitant of this enormous country with this prevailing culture be able to grasp and respect the identity of some 2.5 million people in North Brabant with their chapels? The answer to this question lies hidden in the compositions he made and that can be listened to on this album. Yes, Ben Chasny has been able to convert the phenomenon of a simple chapel devoted to Mary into music. The physical and the spiritual have found each other. What a beautiful world…just listen! - Paul Spapens

The Catenary Wires are a group comprising Amelia Fletcher, Rob Pursey and Ian Button. Their critically acclaimed third album ‘Birling Gap’ was released in 2021. Since then, they have been focusing on their other bands, playing around the world with Heavenly (stars of the 90s indiepop scene) and Swansea Sound.
A couple of years ago, word reached Rob and Amelia that Brian had been spotted wearing a Heavenly t-shirt at one of his shows, and was a big fan of their music. Given that they, in turn, were fans of Brian’s poetry, introductions were made, friendships were formed, and ‘Sounds Made By Humans’ took shape.
The album isn’t a set of readings with musical backdrops: it’s a collection of songs, where words and music have become completely intertwined. There are verses, and there are choruses. There is no ‘riffing’, no improvisation. In many ways, Brian’s poems are already like pop songs: brief, direct, and witty; sometimes poignant, sometimes biting and political; but always economical, and always accessible.
Rob took thirteen of Brian’s poems and created melodies and arrangements, which are then played by a full band, with Ian Button on drums and Fay Hallam on keyboard. Sometimes the words of the poems are sung by Amelia or Rob. Sometimes they are spoken by Brian. Sometimes both these things happen at once. This is a pop record where the poetry and the music are equal partners: sounds made by humans in perfect artistic alignment.
Brian Bilston and The Catenary Wires will be performing at selected UK venues in November 2025.

Legendary shoegaze band Chapterhouse will share their first ever recordings on a new EP, White House Demos, released via Sonic Cathedral on May 9.The four tracks were laid down at The White House studio in Weston-super-Mare on January 15, 1989, when the band were only four gigs old. "They were the first songs we wrote as a band," says the band's singer and guitarist Stephen Patman. "At the time our live set consisted of Stooges and '60s garage-psych cover versions which we mixed with these original songs." The tracks weren't included on 2023's career-spanning Chronology boxset because they had been forgotten about - until the intervention of Slowdive guitarist Christian Savill. He and Patman worked together in an office in Reading as their respective bands were starting out and he says the demo remains "their best record"."When the boxset was released, Christian got in touch and reminded me of these demos and how much he loved them," says Stephen. "He was probably the first person I gave a cassette copy to. He still rehearses and records at The White House and was going in for a session the following week, so I asked if he could ask the owner/engineer Martin Nichols to check if he still had them in his archive. Thankfully he did." Of the four tracks that make up the EP, `Ecstasy' has appeared in various versions and permutations on Chapterhouse compilations over the years, but never in its full eight-minute glory; a much later version of `Guilt' was included on the band's 1991 debut album and shoegaze classic Whirlpool; a version of `Die Die Die' was also included with that album on a bonus 12", and remained part of the band's live set for a while. The stunning `See That Girl', however, has never been released before. With 36 years of distance, it sounds like something of a lost classic, and the White House Demos as a whole feel like a brief moment in time captured forever.

Marty Willson-Piper is an English guitarist, singer, and songwriter best known as a longtime member of the Australian band The Church (1980–2013). With a career spanning over 45 years, he has contributed to a wide range of musical projects, including his solo work, collaborations with All About Eve and The Saints, and his own band, Noctorum.

In 2025, Willson-Piper launched Archaeological Dig - Volume 1, the first in a planned trilogy of releases where he re-records over 30 songs from his extensive catalog. This re-imagined collection features ten songs from different time periods, played with strings, acoustics, piano, and keyboards while still incorporating bass, drums, and multi-layered vocals. The album revisits material from his solo career—including selections from In Reflection (1987), which also received a Record Store Day 2025 reissue, and Art Attack (1988)—as well as songs from his tenure with The Church, drawing from landmark albums like Heyday (1985) and Starfish (1988).

Included in Volume 1 are fan favorites like "Tristesse," originally featured on Heyday (1985), and "Spark," from the platinum-selling Starfish (1988). These songs highlight the diversity of Willson-Piper’s catalog and showcase his evocative songwriting and signature guitar work.

Adding to the album’s distinctive presentation, the cover art for Archaeological Dig features a themed sci-fi illustration, with each of the three volumes depicting Willson-Piper in a different setting alongside UFOs. The release is available across all planets and throughout the galaxy via the In Deep boutique label in conjunction with Schoolkids Records.

Blending psychedelic rock, folk, and alternative influences, Willson-Piper’s music remains deeply atmospheric and introspective. Beyond his recording career, he is also an avid vinyl collector, music historian, and passionate champion of independent artistry.

"My Last Star" began as a dream that Greg Lee of Hepcat had the week before his death in March of 2024. Greg dreamed of a Slackers song. The Slackers have completed this song, and now the world can hear this truly one of a kind collaboration. In Greg's dream, an old neighbor picked him up in a classic car, turned on the stereo, and played a Slackers song that - at the time - did not exist on our plane of reality. It sounds like the stuff of myth, but the song was so crystal clear in the dream that when he awoke around 2 or 3 in the morning, he immediately wrote down the lyrics he had heard, still humming the tune. "I hadn't seen Greg so excited about a new song in a very long time," says Lee's longtime partner, Mandie Becker. "I found the lyrics when I was organizing his things. I knew he had a voice recording on his phone, too. I decided the best situation was to offer it to The Slackers so we could all hear the song on the stereo from Greg's dream." "I was floored when I received Greg's vocal demo with the lyrics and I vowed to finish the song and make the dream a reality," says Slackers saxophonist Dave Hillyard. "I took the vocal demo to The Slackers, Vic Ruggiero harmonized it, and we wrote music around the words. With this song we came full circle. Greg had given us a gift and we needed to give it back to his family, friends, and musical community. We are the medium for his message." The longer history behind this collaboration is a story of decades of friendship, collaboration, artistry, and mutual respect between LA's Hepcat and NYC's The Slackers, who although from opposite coasts, have both been leading lights and creative forces in the underground ska scene since the early 1990s. Both Hepcat and The Slackers concerned themselves with timeless songwriting that paid homage to the longstanding roots of the music. It is an extraordinary final work envisioned by a beloved and thoughtful musician of the highest caliber and completed by longtime friends and collaborators he knew from the moment of inspiration were the ones that would play it. It is literally a dream come true. "My Last Star" is available as a 12" UV Printed Vinyl Single from Pirates Press Records, with art by The Slackers' in-house artist Catt Gould. The 12" also includes instrumental and dub versions of the song. As a matter of fact, snippets of Greg's original vocal demo from his phone are subtly mixed in toward the end of the instrumental version, underscoring his posthumous presence on the record. Greg's songwriting royalties, as well as a portion of the proceeds from the sales of "My Last Star," will be passed on to his four daughters.

Illusive Bristolian producer Claude Cooper returns with ‘Friendly Sounds Vol 1’; part psychedelic trip, part romping beat tape, part party. The album was inspired by the vinyl discoveries made from Cooper’s months of digging and cataloguing the bulging inventory of Bedminster’s Friendly Records record shop. Cooper fed these myriad captured sounds through the studio and then, blurring the lines between sampling and performance, arranged and embellished them with keyboards, drum machines, bass guitar and more, also co-opting BEAK> bassist Billy Fuller and esteemed composer Ben Salisbury to contribute.

With most of the tracks in and out within 90 seconds, the album is best enjoyed as a continuous course. Play side A, play the B, then flip it back and listen all over again. Stand out moments include tremulous cut ‘n’ paste jam ‘Jackie’, the moody string-laden ‘Rainbow Eternity’, funky sitar workout ‘Nerd Nork’, and atmospheric closer ‘Take Flight’. Sharing a similarly broad and experimental sound palette as the likes The Avalanches, Madlib, The Go Team, and Edan; ‘Friendly Sounds Vol 1’ is the soundtrack to a wild joyride down South Bristol’s North Street, foot on the gas, hand on the horn, LPs spilling from the boot.

Cooper’s irrepressible debut album ‘Myriad Sounds' (Jan ‘22) caught the attention of the UK's press and radio alike. Mojo's four star review described it as “Bristol’s beat scene backdrops late night jams”, Uncut enjoyed the "rugged psych-funk romp" and Louder than War declared "it’s vital and vibrant and exactly what we need to kick start the year”. Bonus round 'More Myriad Sounds' (Apr ‘23) added Brooklyn vocalist Brain Fog to the melange with a bounty of pyretic vocal performances. DJ Mag called it “A fierce, kaleidoscopic trip” while Bandcamp Daily said “This album of cross-genre influences is as likely to get it included in any number of best-of columns, with the theme of serious fun as their common element”. Called a "mysterious Bristol breaks scientist" by Lauren Laverne, BBC radio DJs including Cerys Matthews, Gideon Coe, Huw Stephens, Jamie Cullum, Stuart Maconie, and Tom Ravenscroft have rinsed Cooper’s tracks, with Huey Morgan inviting Cooper to contribute a Block Party Mix for his show.



‘Stay A While’, the first showing of Cooper’s new shop sampling stunners, was released on 7” in January ‘24. Lush string flourishes sliced with 6Ts girl-group vocals and rollicking piano chords resulted in a dreamy, end of night, lights up anthem in-the-making that The Arts Desk called “A horn-fired, beatsy, chop-around that recalls The Avalanches”. Releasing the album is Friendly Records, the best little record shop in Bristol and now a burgeoning record label. Opened by Tom Friend on North Street in 2016, it’s gone on to become a hub of the local musical community. As well as Claude Cooper, the label has released LPs by Alison Cotton, Floating World Pictures, Christian Madden & The Enemy Chorus, Nick Craft, as well as handling the War Child series of 7”s with BEAK>, Idles, J Dilla, PJ Harvey, Portishead, and Sleaford Mods + Hot Chip.



Claude Cooper will DJ at the one-day Friendly Festival on 10th May in aid of War Child, which will feature Sleaford Mods, Katy J Pearson, The 45s, Zalizo and DJ sets by Ishmael Ensemble, Heavenly Jukebox and Friendly Records DJs.

Berlin-based French-Irish multimedia artist Zoe Mc Pherson levels up on their third full-length "Pitch Blender", mangling years of experience DJing and performing live into a tight set of cybernetic soundsystem experiments that flicker between the rave and the art space.

Cast your mind back to February 2020 for a moment, when Mc Pherson released their last album "States of Fugue". The world seemed less tangled somehow, and yet Mc Pherson's precision-engineered fusion of exploratory sound design and visceral club pressure seemed to hint at a cataclysmic event none of us were really expecting. Only a few weeks after its release the world changed forever, and the majority of us were grounded - forced to consider our lives and the movement (or lack thereof) surrounding us. The philosophy of this extended time period is welded into the bones of "Pitch Blender", Mc Pherson's supple third album. They have learned plenty in the last two years, and infuse all of that anxiety and spiky emotionality into a spread of tracks that sound as powerful in headphones as they do over a well-tweaked soundsystem, soldering vocals, environmental recordings and instrumental flourishes to unpredictably pneumatic, cybernetic beats.

Anyone that's caught one of Mc Pherson's energetic live performances over the last few months will have an idea of what "Pitch Blender" is made of. They're an artist who's somehow able to match the raw energy of post-punk and no-wave music with the brain-altering potential of the best experimental club tracks, vocalizing an incongruous post-lockdown reality over beats that sound as if they're in a permanent state of flux. 'On Fire' splutters to life in a frenetic patter of drums that blur into oddly soothing hoover sounds, snaking lysergically towards a drop that's teased constantly, and never comes. We're forced to wait until 'The Spark' for that, fighting through choppy, pitch-mangled guitar and rolling beats until a gruesome kick drum forces its way through the psilocybin mists and heaving Bristol-inspired bass clonks. Backed up with just the inverted traces of recognizable breaks, this vigorous pulse lies at the heart of "Pitch Blender", the driving force that powers Mc Pherson's sound even when it's only hinted at.

'Blender' is the moment where Mc Pherson show their full hand, using crackling sound effects, ghost vocals and uneven rhythms to build a textural landscape that's so evocative you can almost taste it. Squealing modular synth effects sound like gameshow buzzers being triggered in another dimension and propel the track forward - it's club music, just about, but Mc Pherson's motivation is world-building, and their world is colorful, abstract, and dizzyingly surreal. "Obsolete user," their voice echoes over driving airlock kicks. But they take a swift left turn with 'Lamella', reducing the kinetic club rhythms to a longing simmer and letting loose with powerful vocals, intoning with robotic, gender-fluxed intensity. On 'Wait', New York City's clacking crosswalk signal - already an effective club track on its own - is transformed into a reminder to slow down, juxtaposed with booming sub-heavy kicks, acidic synths and effervescent percussion that rattles in time with the vibrations. It's foley rave, built for pure psychedelic intensity to blur the line between real life and sonic fiction.

One of the album's most galvanic tracks, 'Power Dynamics' curves a double-time rhythm around breathless HQ sound design squiggles until it hits a polyrhythmic crescendo, striking a queasy balance between rave hedonism and ritualistic hand drum energy. It all builds towards eerie closing track 'Outside' that acts as an important wind down, spotlighting Mc Pherson's ability to operate outside of the rhythmic spectrum, using cinematic scrapes and flickering neon synths to create music that's tense but never terrifying. The track feels like the end credits of a particularly bewildering movie - something between the cyberpunk dystopia of "Ghost in the Shell" and the vivid, sky-scraping beauty of "Koyaanisqatsi". Mc Pherson has managed something special with "Pitch Blender": mashing together genres with rare focus, and sharpening their engineering skills to a fine point, they've concocted an antidote to contemporary malaise - a wakeup call that's begging us to loosen our limbs and move.

On ‘Animal’, Ash Fure appeals to “animal intelligence” by using sounds that are inherently physical and driven by perception, athleticism and interaction. Placing polycarbonate sheeting over an inverted subwoofer she built alongside her partner Xavi Aguirre and brother Adam, Fure isolates the physical impact of sound by focusing on psychoacoustic sub-bass pulses, semi-perceptible micro-rhythms and discomfiting white noise bursts, linking the process to her experiences in Berlin and Detroit’s techno dungeons where the sound has to adapt to the space it’s performed in. When she performed ‘Animal’ for the first time, Fure fabricated a “listening gym”, allowing the audience to interact in real-time by circuit training in response to the sound. The sweat is almost audible across the record, a run-on selection of rhythms, resonances and abstractions that sound like interlocking heartbeats on a series of treadmills. Her fascination with techno’s cavernous cathedrals is clear from the beginning, but Fure doesn’t worship at the altar: we’re hit with the feeling, not the aesthetic. The beats themselves, made from unstable vibrations and waterlogged, reverberating clicks, echo the brain’s unconscious reaction to repetition in a vast concrete box, the feeling you get when each percussive snag ricochets from every surface in the building. Coddling these whirring, criss-crossing polyrhythms with harsh, distorted low-end retches, Fure accurately recreates the energy and fatigue of the endless weekend sesh. We never once encounter techno in its expected shell, just its residue - the outline of humans figuring out their relationship with technology, architecture and each other. Fure’s use of dynamics is also deviously smart, marking out an overall rhythm that’s not tied to the strength of the sounds themselves, but just volume and physical impact. Often her most brutal sounds - ear-splitting squeals and overdriven mechanical whirrs - are reduced to an almost inaudible level, a bit like the bandy legged trip to the bathroom, or the escape to some dimly lit nook, the part of the night where you can still detect the sound on your skin without being battered by it. When the undulating rhythm returns in earnest, Fure masks acidic sequences in jet engine expulsions, still refusing to objectify anything that an AI model might be able to pick up on.